*Someone who understands the teaching of sages is a sage. Someone who understands the teaching of mortals is a mortal. A mortal who can give up the teaching of mortals and follow the teaching of sages becomes a sage. Yet the fools of this world prefer to look for sage apart from themselves; they don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage.*

*The sutras say, "Among men of no understanding, don't preach this sutra. And the sutras say, "Mind is the teaching." Yet people of no understanding don't believe their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.*

― **Bodhidharma** \[Founder of Zen, died 532?\]

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Commentary and questions: In order to attain some measure of real understanding of the great matter at hand, one must first attain an awareness of the Absolute. What Bodhidharma is pointing towards here is not what is based upon the ability to study or even expound the teachings, as this all is ultimately illusory and ethereal, but the sage that was never born and thus can never die...

What is it that can't be spoken or transmitted? What is it that can't be learned or taught, sought after or even found? This is the ineffable or the Absolute, something far beyond all self-limited reasoning and even time itself, yet also within and throughout it all. Do you see it?

And of course since the Absolute is beyond the mind's capacity to directly understand or resolve and can't be directly spoken of or revealed to anyone, this means that when a full understanding isn't developed then other lesser things are going to be generated in its place in order to try to make sense of things. That is merely delusion; to get to the heart of real understanding one must learn to accept the truth of not knowing and live within accordance of the ultimate truth of emptiness.

Bodhidharma: Yet the fools of this world prefer to look for sage apart from themselves; they don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage.